of destiny occurs on every page. If in this one phrase it is associated with writing, why do we not find the same association in other expressions and connections? Why do we hear nothing of a book of fate? Why nothing of a book at all? Why is no bard represented as writing his poems? why no soothsayer as writing his prophecies? why nobody as writing anything? Here, however, our author interposes, and tells us, that we hear in the Iliad of a sealed letter sent by Protus to Jobates, king of Lycia, with instructions to kill Bellerophon the bearer. The passage has been generally understood of late, as referring to some sort of conventional signs, or pictorial representations, by which the Lycian king was informed of his kinsman's wishes. Mure opposes this explanation in a labored argument, and shows that the passage may without absurdity be understood as a poetic description of a written letter. He has hardly shown, however, that his own interpretation is necessary, or that, when connected with the other indications of the poems, it is even probable. On the whole we find ourselves constrained to admit, that the Homeric poems do not contain any distinct and unequivocal reference to an art of writing: and this fact we think can only be accounted for by supposing, that such an art, if known at all, was not at that time familiar to the great mass of the Hellenic people. It may have been already common with the traders of the sea-coast towns, who borrowed it from their Phoenician visitors. It may have extended itself to the priests, to be used in their temple records. It may have come to be employed by the minstrel-guilds, to perpetuate their finest compositions. But to the great body of the nation, we must believe it to have been as yet unknown. It found no place, therefore, in the Homeric stock of description and illustration. The early epic poetry was addressed to the popular mind, and whether written or not was designed to operate upon that mind by oral recitation. It must of course confine itself to objects of general familiarity. The whole question is one, in regard to which a somewhat doubtful probability is the utmost height that we can expect to attain; and the view here given seems to us to have a greater probability, to be encumbered with fewer difficulties, than any other.

If we had not trespassed too long already on the patience of our readers, we should be glad to follow our author through the Epic cycle, the Hesiodic or didactic school of poets, and especially through the interesting account of the early lyrical poetry, which occupies his third volume, and might fitly claim an article by itself. We think it unfortunate, however, that he was precluded by the chronological limits of his work from taking up the great Theban poet, who, if not the greatest master of the lyre, is our best extant specimen of the lyric muse of Greece. The deficiency will be supplied, though

with less of continuity than could be wished, in the next published volumes of the work. An undertaking of such extensive and elaborate research can hardly be expected to advance with much rapidity. It will be the universal wish of scholars, however, as well in this country as in Europe, that its stages may be as swift, and its stops as few and brief as possible.

ART. II. ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, A RESULT OF CHARACTER.

LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERGYMAN. Life and Correspondence of John Foster.

THIS famous letter contains John Foster's argument against the future punishment of the wicked. He regards future punishment as an arbitrary infliction directly by God's hand for the sins of this life; while his argument implies a denial of man's free-agency, its force depends on the absence of a comprehensive and philosophical view of the unity of the soul's entire existence, and of the connection of the future state with the present as one whole. It is not intended, in this article, to examine Foster's arguments in detail, but to present a train of thought striking at the fundamental error on which his reasoning depends.

When a child dies, it has been beautifully said that it never grows old. It is thought of always as a child; it is embalmed in the affections a half-opened bud, never losing its sweetness, never blooming into maturity, never withering in decay. When the image of such a long-lost child flashes on the mind in contrast with its former equals, now vigorous in manhood or withering in old age, we are startled at the vivid revelation of the changes wrought by time.

A few years ago the body of a young man, retaining undecayed the fullness and beauty of opening manhood, was dug from a coal mine in England. None recognized him, or even remembered that one had perished on that spot. But, as the discovery was noised abroad, a woman, wrinkled, and bent, and leaning on a staff, tottered to the spot; there after a moment's scrutiny, she cast herself, with a piercing cry, on the body and embraced it with intense affection. It was her betrothed, who, just before their marriage was to be consummated, had perished in the mine. Then she was young and fair like him; now, wrinkled and de

crepit, she stands over his youthful form, and measures in the contrast, the ravages of three score years.

Once at a semi-centennial alumni meeting, as the graduates were entering their names at the desk, we saw two gray-haired men come forward from different parts of the house, and greet each other as classmates, amid the acclamations of the throng. They had not met since they graduated, nearly fifty years before; and now, as they scrutinized each other's faces, searching for the well-remembered features of former years, they were compelled to see in a moment the changes effected by passing from youth to age.

When scenes like these reveal the changes of a whole life-time in the flash of a moment's glance, and we are saddened by contemplating the ravages of time on the body, we may profitably reflect and full of solemnity is the thought-that not less real are the changes wrought on the soul. The simplicity of the soul in childhood has long since, perhaps, been seamed with cunning, its credulity corrugated and stiffened into skepticism, its blushing, modesty bronzed in impudence, its affections soured into misanthropy, and the whole soul seared and furrowed by manifold transgressions. Could the soul suddenly make itself visible, so that we could see at a glance the scathing influences of a sinful life upon it, the spectacle would be more affecting than that of the ravages of time on the body.

This idea accords with the language of the Bible: "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee. Know, therefore, and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God." We do not say that the prophet intended in these words any exact philosophical theory as to the influence of sin; but we must suppose that he intended to describe sin as itself the agency in inflicting its own punishment.

There are various ways in which sin effects this result. The more closely we examine the delicate and wondrous mechanism. of the soul, the more apparent it is that sin disorders it in all its parts. It embitters the memory, it defiles the imagination, it troubles the conscience, it inflames the desires, it makes the habits into chains and fetters, it turns every faculty and susceptibility into an instrument of torture, and the sinful soul, like the bomb-shell in its terrific career, carries within itself the burning elements of its own destruction. This subject is too large for a single article. We will confine ourselves to a single branch of it-the ruin necessarily resulting from a sinful character.

When a lecturer on temperance holds up before his audience the stomach of a drunkard, or a picture of it; when he exhibits, in their different stages, the progressive effects of alcohol in dis

easing its coats, in filling it with sores, in making it a mass of deformity and disease; when he argues that a disorder, which thus consumes the very organs of life, must be productive of suffering, disease, and death, the argument is felt to be unanswerable. It is an argument analogous to this which we urge respecting the effect of sin on the soul. Could we hold up before our readers the soul of a sinner, could they see the changes which sin has produced in it, could they see the spirit, no longer beaming in angelic grace, but festering and gangrened with pride, impenitence, and selfishness, could they see the vital powers of virtue decaying, pernicious desires eating like cancers, baleful passions swollen and inflamed, and "from the soul of the foot even unto the head, no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores," the argument would be seen to be decisive. "Sin, because it works such effect on the soul itself, can result only in misery, and by working such effects, it works out its own penalty." All this is really the effect of sin on the soul, though the bodily eye cannot see it. A man's character is different from his acts; it is consolidated by his acts. What he continually does, he forms a habit of doing; the feelings habitually indulged become a second nature to him. Thus, man not only performs sinful acts, but-what is of immeasurably greater consequence his acts affect his character, and stamp their impress on the soul itself; -the desires, the affections, the thoughts, the habits, the whole soul are stamped with the imprint of a sinful character, and realize the apostle's description, "Even their mind and conscience are defiled." The soul of the miser is as really pinched and shriveled by his penuriousness as his body: the soul of the worldling, according to the apostle's terrific language, is scathed by its worldliness and feels the rust of riches eating it, as it were fire. The soul of the debauchee rivals his body in rottenness: "Their heart is as fat as grease." In these cases the effect of sin on the soul is as manifest as that of disease on the body.

But it is not the openly immoral and profligate alone who exhibit these effects. The impenitent of every character present a contrast to the health and beauty of perfect holiness, showing too plainly the ravages of sin on the soul. Behold the soul perfected in holiness, delighting in intercourse with God, free from every sinful emotion, overflowing with universal, unselfish love, radiant in the very image of Christ and in the loveliness and peace of heaven. Behold, now, that soul fallen in impenitence, disliking to think of God, disliking prayer as a burden and all God's service as a weariness, the whole current of the thoughts worldly, selfishness the ruling principle of the life, the lips sealed against every word of praise, every fountain of love and heavenly hope frozen and motionless in the heart, discontented with the present,

goaded by restless desires, "without God and without hope in the world." Who can look at the contrast without exclaiming, "How art thou fallen from heaven, oh son of the morning. Thine own wickedness corrects thee; know, therefore, and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God." There are two facts recorded in the Bible-the only two of their kind-which show in a terrific light the effect of a single act of sin on the character of the soul. We refer to the sin of Adam and the sin of the fallen angels. In both these cases the first act of sin produced a fall, a moral revolution, a depravation of the whole soul, and was the beginning of a continued sinfulness. We might not have anticipated, could we have speculated on the subject antecedent to the event, that a single act of sin would issue in depraving the whole character of a hitherto holy being. Yet so, in every known instance, the fact has been.

Subsequent sins, committed by a being already sinful, cannot produce effects so marked; we do not see the soul falling, like a star burning as it falls, from heaven to earth. But every act of sin produces a real effect in depraving the soul and confirming a sinful character. The law of habit is familiar; yet in this view of the subject it reveals one of the most fearful facts in the constitution of the human soul; the fact that a man cannot act without affecting his character; that every act he performs, every feeling he indulges, is strengthening invisible chains that bind him, and making it more and more necessary to continue to act in a similar manner and to indulge similar feelings.

It should be considered, also, that character is permanent. Permanence is implied in the very idea of it. Rarely does a decisive change take place in a single trait of character; and, when such a change does take place, it constitutes an era in the life. The fundamental change of the character from impenitence to penitence, from selfishness to love, is a change so great that nothing less than God's Spirit ever effects it. And if this character is already sinful, permanent as it is in itself, every act of sin is consolidating it into a more unalterable fixedness, a more impregnable solidity. Thus, the sinner's own wickedness is itself the agency in punishing him by depraving his character and confirming him hopelessly in habits of sin.

The principle which has now been elucidated renders inevitable the future and endless misery of ungodly men, by rendering inevitable their future and endless sinfulness. It shows that the doctrine of future and eternal punishment is not less a necessary result of the laws of the human soul, than a doctrine revealed in the word of God. We need look no farther than the considerations just urged to discern a tendency to a fixed and unalterable